


Even If You Don't Have Anywhere To Go

by Regalli



Series: All You'll Ever Need to Know [2]
Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Ableism, Canon Carlos, Carlos is Autistic, Emotional Manipulation, Hurt/Comfort with no physical comfort, Kevin mentioned but not shown, M/M, internalized ableism, spoilers for episode 73: Triptych
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-03
Updated: 2015-09-03
Packaged: 2018-04-18 21:20:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4720838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Regalli/pseuds/Regalli
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Scientists are always fine.</p>
<p>Right up until the moment they realize they aren't. (A not-quite companion to Nowhere Fast.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Even If You Don't Have Anywhere To Go

Cecil comes home to find Carlos sitting on the couch with his legs pulled up to his chest. It hasn't been a good day for either of them, it seems. Cecil sits down just past the edge of his lab coat, close enough Carlos can flop onto him for cuddles if he wants but still be comfortable if he doesn't. 

Carlos doesn't, just pulls his head up from between his knees and gives a little nod. It's a quiet night, it seems, so Cecil drapes a blanket over his shoulders. Carlos nods and pulls it over his head. 

When Carlos speaks again, it's after Cecil's written about two hundred words of his next slashfic. "Do you think that last Kevin... do you think he's sorry?" 

"About what? Strex? The desert otherworld?" Carlos nods again, pulling his face out from under the blanket. He hasn't really talked much about why he decided to leave there, beyond it being a really long story and that if Cecil really wanted to leave Night Vale they could find somewhere else to live. Cecil hasn't tried to push it. "I... He certainly was sorry about what Strex did."

"To him," Carlos says quietly. 

"... Do you want to talk about what happened?" Carlos is quiet and pulls the blanket around his knees. "It's okay if you don't, just... I want to know... Did he hurt you? It's not your fault, I don't blame you if he did-" 

Carlos shakes his head, and then presses his hands into his hair for comfort. "He made me feel... less. Not hurt, really, just... less." Cecil is about to speak up, but Carlos decides to start talking again. "I thought... I was so excited when I started making friends there. I thought I was finally fitting in with other people, I wouldn't have to depend on just you anymore. I thought they listened." 

Cecil makes sure his hands are firmly in his lap. Okay, good. Carlos is definitely in one of those moods where he doesn't want to be touched, as much as Cecil wants to hug him and tell him it's all right and pet his hair... but it won't help Carlos right now, not when he's feeling like this. 

"People are hard to understand," he says finally.

"I know. I mean, that's basically my whole life, right? But I thought I was finally getting things and instead I just hurt you." 

"You didn't, Carlos."

"I could have gone home. You were hurting and upset and I could have gone home and instead I didn't." He shakes his head harder for a few seconds. "And the worst part is I don't even have anything to show for it."

"That's okay. You don't need to have results, you don't need anything. I'm just happy to have you back." Which is true, he's said it every night since the opera house, but it never seems to sink in for Carlos.

"I just... You were so sad, and I don't feel... I spent my whole year wrong." He pulls the blanket up around him.

"So you did. So what? I seem to recall someone likes telling me not to beat myself up for honest mistakes." He smiles at Carlos, who bunches his blanket further. "It took you most of that year just to figure out where you were and how to travel between the two worlds. It's not your fault you got stranded there in the first place, and once you did you made the best of it. And it helped me, hearing you so excited about whatever you'd found that day. It helped to know that even if I was in pain and danger and stressed beyond measure, you weren't. You were safe. I needed that escape, sometimes." 

"I could have looked harder. I just kept forgetting-"

"Which I would consider holding against you were it not for the fact that you also forget to eat sometimes." Cecil says, hands on his hips. "If you could just stop being interested in every vaguely scientifically interesting thing you see, you wouldn't be the Carlos I love."

"I wish I could have been there for you, all the same." He sighs. "I really hated Night Vale sometimes this last year. It just... I don't mind if I get in trouble, I'm a Scientist and an Outsider, but you belong in Night Vale. You love Night Vale. It shouldn't hurt you like that." Cecil can't think of a response to that. "So then when I found the others, and I realized we were in the Dog Park and it wasn't just me being rejected, there were all these people who weren't good enough... I felt angry. And then suddenly there was this guy asking me, if Night Vale didn't want me and I didn't want it, why should I keep trying to go back?"

"That was Kevin?"

"That was Kevin," Carlos says with a nod. "And he sounded so nice. And I thought, 'okay, so his shirt's dirty, so's everyone's here. We're in a desert, things don't get cleaned a lot.' And I mean, of course they wouldn't be blood stains, most of the masked army had barbecue sauce stains too and I'd seen those being made, I knew they weren't blood, and... he seemed so nice." Carlos's voice has the same broken edge to it he had when he asked earlier if Kevin was sorry. 

"There are a lot of horrible people that seem nice but aren't. Just like there are a lot of wonderful people who aren't sure who to trust and sometimes choose wrong. That's not any fault of theirs." 

"So he'd suggest experiments to me, but he'd say things like 'I'm sure that cactus is interesting, but why don't you do something useful?' Or he'd touch me and I'd flinch and he'd say he was just being friendly, that I shouldn't be so sensitive. He'd tell me not to be so sad even when I was talking to you and you were hurting, because it wouldn't matter soon enough. That he'd make the radio station and you'd be surprised and happy again. 'And maybe then you'll finally get back to doing science instead of worrying over your boyfriend all the time.'" Carlos imitates Kevin only about as well as he imitates anyone, but Cecil catches the distaste in the word 'boyfriend' there. "And then... When I lost all my research from the previous year, and he was just asking when I'd have it done, I realized... I didn't think anyone there really seemed to listen to me. And so I left. And I went back to you and I realized that as nice as Kevin seemed, nothing he ever said actually made me feel good about myself. The opposite, really." The next few sentences seem rushed. "So when I heard him on the radio today - he seemed nice enough, that first Kevin, and the third one seemed upset and I felt bad for him but I thought - I thought of all the things he had said to me that were actually kind of rude when I thought about it and all the ways he had made me feel uncomfortable because it wasn't THAT loud or why don't I look at him when he talks it's so rude and I thought maybe I should go back and help him escape, but I don't- I don't really want to." Carlos is starting to cry, clutching two handfuls of hair and shaking.

Cecil gets up, goes to their bedroom, and picks up the blankets in a large pile that he dumps around Carlos. It's not a hug, but it's close and it's what Carlos needs right now. He absorbs the pile and arranges the blankets around his ball of shame. "Do you want me to get the pillows, too?" Cecil asks quietly once he's done.

"I... no. Thank you, Cecil." Carlos cuddles up against the blankets.

"Any time, Carlos. You've done the same for me plenty of times." Cecil's been through a couple of Carlos's Bad Days, since they've been dating, which is how he knows things like not to touch him, but more often it was Cecil, worn out from days of Strexcorp abuse, who needed the care. 

"I just- you couldn't do anything, those times, I could have- If I just realized what he was saying, or found a way back sooner, or been good enough to get through the doors in the first place, if I had just been _normal_ -" Carlos stops, his eyes widening as he realizes what he just said. He quickly burrows into his blanket nest, covering it up behind him. 

Cecil's Comforting Boyfriend thoughts are all derailed because all he can think now is _"Oh."_ It takes a while for him to put the words together, because he can't afford a misstep here, but finally he starts. 

"Carlos. I know you see the world differently from me, from most of us really. You could take a random rock on the road, look at it for five minutes, and suddenly you'd be able to list every single characteristic about that rock and they would all be interesting. You can talk for hours about how an Erlenmeyer Flask is the pinnacle of aesthetic and practical design, or how brains are just groups upon groups of infinitely small particles that have managed to work together into something greater. You are brilliant, and passionate, and you have an endless enthusiasm and joy for the world that I honestly envy sometimes. And that means you throw yourself, one hundred percent, into everything you do, everything you are because you don't know how to do any less. You don't understand how the world works - none of us can really understand how the world works - but instead of getting scared or confused or declaring that nothing matters, you decided that everything matters, the exact same amount as every other thing. And you try to understand the world, you study and test everything and if you get things wrong then that's just your view expanding because that's what science is, because those rules don't change. And I love that about you, all of it. I love that you want to watch my favorite movie over and over again so you can learn the lines as well as I know them, I love that you get so excited about your discoveries you can't wait to tell me and have to send me a text in the middle of the work day. I love that you look at me sometimes and I feel like the rest of the world doesn't matter for a while, just you and me and whatever we're doing. Sometimes I need that."

"So you're not perfect. Not 'normal', whatever that is. And maybe you forget things that seem blindingly obvious in hindsight because you're so set on what you think the rules are. Maybe you trust people more than you should, because given the choice between fear and curiosity you will always choose the latter. Maybe you get so caught up in your own thoughts you forget that there is in fact the rest of the world and that there are actually things you need to do, or that you didn't tell me something important because you think it's obvious, or make conversational blunders because you don't realize there's a rule there, or have trouble understanding what you're feeling because you just know that you feel. But Carlos? No matter how much any of those things bother me, I wouldn't want to change them for all the world. They're irritating, sometimes, but they all come from the things I love best about you, the things that make you amazing. You can't turn off your curiosity when it's not convenient, or only hyperfocus on some things and not others. And we work around that. You set alarms, and I remind you of things or try to ask directly even though it doesn't come naturally to me. You take care to tell me exactly what you're feeling when you think it's important I know, to be as specific as possible. And that's fine. You are a human being, and part of being human and letting other humans into our lives is that sometimes they'll annoy us. No matter what their neurotype is. So you being willing to try for me, you doing as well as you can so that those problems are farther between, that is enough for me. It was harder last year, because we weren't physically together and couldn't communicate in ways you do really well in. You had an easier time getting distracted, and sometimes you'd call so many times about scientific discoveries rather than just calling once about the whole day so we'd actually be able to talk for a while. And apparently you trusted people who took advantage of that trust. I don't blame you for that, for any of that. You're allowed to make mistakes. You're allowed to not forgive someone who hurt you. You're allowed to take a bad situation and adjust and enjoy it. You're okay to not be normal."

"Because Carlos? I don't want normal. I don't want someone who I can't stay up all night with talking because we're so caught up in being together. I don't want someone who wouldn't take me on a date to do tests on trees because he wanted to share something he loved with me. I want the man who spent an afternoon thinking of ways to help a badly-injured cat adjust to his new grounded life, even though he was allergic. I want the man who would clear time for an entire day, or a week, so that he could focus on just me when things were particularly bad. I want him to be late for dates sometimes because he found out the mice in his lab were super-intelligent, to recite back parts of my old shows because he found they were comforting, to ask to touch my clothes because he likes the textures, to be so artificeless he gets in trouble with the Sheriff's Secret Police because he can't just lie, to be so nervous about asking me to move in with him that he decided it would be easier to just buy a condo first and ask me if I wanted to live in it later. I want you, Carlos. Autism and all. And if Kevin wanted normal, then he can have it and keep it because you are extraordinary. Normal doesn't even compare." He takes a deep breath after all that and looks over at the blanket pile, where Carlos has emerged with wide, tear-filled eyes. 

"Thank you." He shakes his head, but he's smiling all the same. Cecil decides to take that as 'overwhelmed, but in a good way'.

"It's nothing. I love you." He puts his hand on the edge of the blankets, where Carlos takes it with a hand still covered in blankets. 

"I know. I love you too." It's a while before Carlos stops crying completely, before he asks Cecil for a hug and they end up asleep on the couch together, but it's all right. Everything is all right.

**Author's Note:**

> Well, thank you for reading all this self-indulgent character meta-ing. Honestly I'm just waiting for the writers to actually come out and say "Looking at it, yeah, we didn't intend it but Carlos is autistic" because his brain patterns ping so familiarly with me. It is so refreshing to have a character like this who's characterized as being warm and friendly rather than cold and rude. So I wanted to write out how I view him, and this episode's reveal with Kevin gave me a chance to muse on the reasons Carlos decided to leave the Dog Park. (And vent some long-standing insecurities of my own.) 
> 
> Title is from "Nowhere Fast", from the movie Streets of Fire. Maybe one of these days I'll get around to writing my full headcanon of Carlos's backstory, but I feel the song fits him and Cecil well enough as it is.


End file.
